Robert B. Parker Read Online Free

out whatever you do?”
    “Yes.”
    “You gonna do what we told you to do?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Your old lady’s got a nice-looking pussy. Be a shame to feed it to the worms.”
    “I …” There was a click. The flat voice was gone. Newman put the receiver down very carefully.
    Janet said, “Was it them?”
    Newman nodded.
    Janet said, “Call the cops.”
    Newman shook his head.
    “No?” Janet said. “Why the hell not? If you won’t, I will.”
    He shook his head again. “We can’t,” he said. “Listen.”
    Then he told her about the man with the slicked-back hair and the black woman and Corporal Croft and Lieutenant Vincent. He told her about the picture of Adolph Karl in the book and about seeing Adolph Karl in the lineup. He told her about Croft’s warning and promise of protection.
    “But they knew so fast. They must have a cop on the payroll,” Newman said.
    She nodded. “What a fucking mess,” she said.
    “What could I do. I couldn’t just keep jogging when the guy shot the girl.”
    “I know,” she said. “I know.”
    “I mean, I had to do what I thought was right.”
    “Yes, always. Sometimes, Aaron, I think you read your own books too much.” She shook her head angrily. “Never mind. We can’t have a damned argument. We have to think what to do.”
    “We know what to do. I go in tomorrow and tell the cops that I was wrong. And no matter what they say I stick to it and we keep our mouths shut and lie low. Maybe we should go away.”
    “I can’t go away,” she said. “I have to work. I have a graduate seminar. I’m up for associate this year. I can’t just up and leave, for crissake.”
    “What’s more important,” he said, “your life or your fucking job?”
    “I can’t leave my job,” she said. “You go and tell the police you were wrong. And that will be the end of it.”
    “And it won’t bother you to think about it?” he said. “You won’t feel like they’ve demeaned us?” He was sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. He looked at the floor.
    She snapped her head around at him. “Demeaned? Who demeaned you? Were you stripped naked and gagged with your own underwear? And tied up so tight you couldn’t wiggle your toes? You know anything about that?”
    “Did they …?”
    “Did they fuck me? Did they feel me up? Isn’t that a swell question. No. They just stared at me and didn’t say anything and I was lying there on my back with all that rope around me stark naked and they stared at me. You like the scene?”
    “Shut up,” he said.
    “And one of them takes out his knife and puts it down there and I thought he was going to cut me wide open and he cut me on the belly. And I couldn’t do a damn thing or even scream. Feel demeaned?”
    “Shut up,” he said. The trapezius muscles on each side of his neck were bunched and his hands were clenched and clamped between his thighs and the muscles in his forearms bulged.
    “And then they left,” she said. She was breathing a little hard. Her face was flushed. “And I lay there in the dark all tied up with my underwear stuffed in my mouth and didn’t know what to do and couldn’t do anything anyway and didn’t know if you’d be home or not and couldn’t get loose. And you’re talking demeaned to me? Who the fuck demeaned you?”
    “Shut up,” he said. His voice rose and his shoulders shook. “You’re demeaned I’m demeaned. You think it’s better to sit here and listen to you talk about howsome goddamned hoodlums mistreated you and me not around?”
    “It’s a lot easier than to have it happen to you, buster.”
    He stood. His back was to her. He looked out the window at the darkened lawn.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if it is any easier. What I do know is you’re making it harder. You like grinding it into me.”
    “Maybe. And maybe you liked looking at me when you came in, bound and gagged and naked. Maybe you liked that,” she said. “Maybe it turned you